There is an increasing use of digital photography based upon decreased size and cost of digital cameras and increased availability, usability, and resolution. Manufacturers and the like continuously strive to provide smaller electronics to satisfy consumer demands associated with carrying, storing, and using such electronic devices. Based upon the above, digital photography has demonstrated growth and has proven to be a profitable market for both electronics and software.
A user first experiences the overwhelming benefits of digital photography upon capturing a digital image. While conventional print photography forces the photographer to wait until development of expensive film to view a print, a digital image in digital photography can be viewed within sub-seconds by utilizing a thumbnail image and/or viewing port on a digital camera. Additionally, images can be deleted or saved based upon user preference, thereby allowing efficient use of limited image storage space. In general, digital photography provides a more efficient experience in photography.
Editing techniques available for a digital image are vast and numerous with limitations being only the editor's imagination. For example, a digital image can be edited using techniques such as crop, resize, blur, sharpen, contrast, brightness, gamma, transparency, rotate, emboss, red-eye, texture, draw tools (e.g., a fill, a pen, add a circle, add a box), an insertion of a text, etc. In contrast, conventional print photography merely enables the developer to control developing variables such as exposure time, light strength, type of light-sensitive paper, and various light filters. Moreover, such conventional print photography techniques are expensive whereas digital photography software is becoming more common on computers.
Digital photography also facilitates sharing of images. Once stored, images that are shared with another can accompany a story (e.g., a verbal narration) and/or physical presentation of such images. Regarding conventional print photographs, sharing options are limited to picture albums, which entail a variety of complications involving organization, storage, and accessibility. Moreover, physical presence of the album is a typical manner in which to share print photographs with another.
In view of the above benefits associated with digital photography and deficiencies of traditional print photography, digital images and albums have increasingly replaced conventional print photographs and albums. In particular, image-based video provides a convenient and efficient technique for sharing digital images. Image-based video generally is a slide show of images simulating/emulating motion (e.g., panning, zooming, transitioning, . . . ) through still images. An effect of utilizing image-based video is an enhanced motion video experience that enables details of high-resolution images to be better viewed on a TV screen and/or computer monitor. For example, resolution of a picture taken by a typical 3 Mega Pixel digital still camera is about 2000×1500 pixels whereas resolution of a typical computer monitor is 1024×768 pixels. With the image-based video technique, it is convenient for portions of a 2000×1500 pixel image (e.g., 1024×768 pixels) to be better viewed on a monitor of resolution 1024×768 pixels. This effect is becoming more and more important with the resolution of digital images produced by digital still cameras getting higher and higher. Furthermore, using panning and zooming effects in image-based video, details of such high-resolution pictures can be better viewed on lower resolution display devices such as monitors and/or TV screens.
With the vast sudden exposure to digital photography and digital cameras, the majority of digital camera users are unfamiliar with the plethora of applications, software, techniques, and systems dedicated to generating image-based video presentations. Furthermore, a user typically views and/or prints with little or no delay. Thus, in general, camera users prefer quick and easy image presentation capabilities with high quality and/or aesthetically pleasing features. Traditional image presentation applications and/or software require vast computer knowledge and experience in digital photography editing, (based upon the overwhelming consumer consumption) it is difficult for most users to comprehend and/or to dedicate the necessary time to self-educate themselves in this particular realm.
In view of the above, there is a need to improve upon and/or provide systems and/or methods relating to image-based video creation that facilitate applying motion and transitions to an image to create an aesthetically pleasing viewing experience with minimal user interaction.